Good Show Sir’s Art Direction: It’ll be just like our D&D game we played last night… except John from Accounting can be the hunk attacking a skeleton… and Dianne the Receptionist can be the sword-wielding damsel in a cape!Published 2000

Presumably this image is supposed to capture the action just after the sublime point of impact: the skeleton’s detached skull tumbling through the air, the warrior’s axe at the end of its arc.

But wait!

Why is our resident hunk holding that axe as though it is something distasteful that he might have to drop at any moment? And why does it look like he’s winding up to deliver a strike rather than finishing one? Surely he could not have administered the, er, killing blow.

So it must be the woman who has done it! But clearly she is supposed to be behind the man. Even assuming that the rest of that sword is unnaturally long, it’s hard to see how she could have chopped the skeleton’s head off without also damaging her guy friend.

So if neither of these people has decapitated the skeleton, who is responsible? My money is on the invisible giant standing in front of the woman and to the man’s left. As evidence, note the way his fart is ruffling the woman’s hair like a passing breeze. Our hero’s epic side-part is, of course, left intact.

Ray Harryhausen has a lot to answer for. I’ve never quite understood what holds fighting skellingtons together. Do they still have all their tendons and ligaments, despite the loss of all skin, viscera and musculature?

@TomNoir: No one has actually hit the skeleton. The skeleton itself, having pondered the same questions as Phil, has come to realize the impossible nature of it’s existence thus negating the Animate Physiological Improbability spell that held it together.

When I first looked at this I thought the woman had a skeletal lower body, both legs and a tail. What do you call something like that?

I think FoM is on the right track in concluding that no one has actually struck the skeleton. My theory: the skeleton just looked at these two clowns and laughed his head off (those do look like laugh wrinkles around his eye sockets).

Whatever Blue Moon is, it must be pretty impressive to deserve that font. And whatever is beyond the Blue Moon will deserve an even more awesome font. And what is beyond what is beyond Blue Moon will have to top that. If this is a series, it seems to me the limiting factor in the number of books will be the availability of even more awesome fonts.

Artist: You mean just because I put vaguely fairy-looking blondes and rickety skeletons and blue-jeaned hunks with swords on all my covers? I kind of thought of it as my “signature,” you know? Ok, I admit they’ve been on the last 20 covers I produced, so maybe they are getting a little overexposed, but . . . .

Editor: You idiot! I was talking about the lighting—it’s way overexposed.